Lectures on Knowledge Management

1. Lectures on Knowledge Management Khurshid Ahmad Professor of Artificial Intelligence Centre for Knowledge Management January 2003

2. DEFINITIONS: KNOWLEDGE “The fact of knowing a thing, state, person; A state of being aware or informed; Consciousness”. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1973) Knowing is usually thought to involve believing, though some say that it replaces belief, or that we can believe one thing whilst somehow knowing the opposite. Some think that knowledge is justified true belief.

3. DEFINITIONS: MANAGEMENT “The application of skill or care in the manipulation, use, treatment, or control of things or persons, or in the conduct of an enterprise, operation, etc.”. Oxford English Dictionary

4. DEFINITIONS: MANAGEMENT “The application of skill or care in the manipulation, use, treatment, or control of things or persons, or in the conduct of an enterprise, operation, etc.”. Oxford English Dictionary

5. DEFINITIONS: MANAGEMENT identifying what knowledge assets a company possesses Where is the knowledge asset? What does it contain? What is its use? What form is it in? How accessible is it? analysing how the knowledge can add value What are the opportunities for using the knowledge asset? What would be the effect of its use? What are the current obstacles to its use? What would be its increased value to the company? specifying what actions are necessary to achieve better usability & added value How to plan the actions to use the knowledge asset? How to enact actions? How to monitor actions? reviewing the use of the knowledge to ensure added value Did the use of it produce the desired added value? How can the knowledge asset be maintained for this use? Did the use create new opportunities?

6. DEFINITIONS Knowledge Language; Creativity; Planning, Thinking, Computation Intelligence Cognition The Internet expedites communication & computation

7. DEFINITIONS A new approach to the conservation and (rapid) deployment of the knowledge of organisations, expected to result in innovative, lean organisations.

8. DEFINITIONS The effective management of knowledge expedites solutions to problems by involving a number of different people within an organisation at different levels, and every participant can, if authorised, look at the output of others within the organisation. The management of knowledge serves best when it helps to access knowledge of successful and failed projects, best practice and biographical details of the participants.

9. DEFINITIONS • Knowledge Management - A term which was coined during the early 90s to discuss why Japanese companies had achieved such a dominant position. • The term signalled the shift from the industrial society of the early 20th century, with its focus on land, labour and capital to a knowledge-based society which emphasised the human capital of an organisation.

10. COURSE OUTLINE • Introduction • Innovation • Best Practice

11. COURSE OUTLINE • Introduction and Origins (3 Lectures) • Case Studies in Knowledge Management: The Japanese Miracle (5 Seminars) • Knowledge Management Systems (5 Lectures) • The Management of Expertise (6 Lectures) • Afterword (1 Lecture)

12. COURSE WORK • Coursework due date 28 April 2003 • Presentation/Oral Examination: 1st May 2003 • Presentation 10-15 minutes • Oral Examination 10-15 minutes

13. COURSE OUTLINE Different metaphors to describe economic activity, productivity. Consumption of chemicals: New products Consumption of energy: New processes ‘Consumption’ of knowledge: New ?

14. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS • According to management guru Peter Drucker, it was only at the beginning of the 20th century (c.1895-1905) that management was distinguished from ownership in Germany. • Georg Siemens, a leading banker of his time, asked Werner Siemens to hand over control of latter’s near-bankrupt electrical engineering enterprise to professional managers. • Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller followed suit in the USA. The period 1895-1905 coincides with the rise of the modern movement.

15. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS • According to management guru Peter Drucker, it was only at the beginning of the 20th century (c.1895-1905) that management was distinguished from ownership in Germany. • Georg Siemens, a leading banker of his time, asked Werner Siemens to hand over control of latter’s near-bankrupt electrical engineering enterprise to professional managers. • Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller followed suit in the USA. The period 1895-1905 coincides with the rise of the modern movement.

16. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS The post-modernist equivalent in the industrial genesis of the Northern Hemisphere was during the period spanning 1920-1950. This genesis saw command-and-control structures introduced by the chemical giant du Pont, by General Motors - one of the pioneers of automotive engineering - and by the engineering colossus General Electric. Hierarchically organised enterprises emerged during this period (see Drucker 1988), coinciding with the ascent of post-modernism in the arts, literature, music and politics.

17. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS Computer mediated change management: Changes in the economy, the society and perhaps the world at large, are sometimes precipitated by advances in science and technology; Scientific and technological change is sometimes made possible by the use of computer systems –digital libraries, electronic communications are good examples here. Can we use computers to monitor (and control?) how change is effected?

18. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS • Classic Corporation and Industrial Society: • Frederick W. Taylor, a US engineer in the early part of the 20th century, suggested that an organisation can predict its output accurately from • machine productivity; • work processes; & • time motion analysis of individual workers • THE WORKER WAS ESSENTIALLY VIEWED AS A UNIT OF PRODUCTION. ALL DECISION MAKING AND CREATIVE THOUGHT WAS THE RESERVE OF MIDDLE AND UPPER MANAGEMENT.

19. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS Post-industrial Corporation & Society: ‘Senior-level executives [have] come to understand the economic power of knowledge’ Huseman and Goodman (1998:211)). • ‘KNOWLEDGE RESIDES AT ALL LEVELS OF ORGANIZATION. THE KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION REQUIRES AN ACCEPTANCE THAT PEOPLE AT THE TOP, OR EVEN A GROUP AT THE TOP, DO NOT CONSTITUTE THE REPOSITORY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE. SOMETIMES THE MOST VALUABLE KNOWLEDGE CAN BE FOUND AT THE LEVELS WHERE ORGANISATIONAL MEMBERS ARE CLOSEST TO CUSTOMERS AND SUPPLIERS (ibid:211-212)

20. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS Post-industrial Corporation & Society: The introduction of the prefix ‘post’ in post-modern and post-industrial, is usually used to indicate a rupture from the past. The American Daniel Bell and the Frenchman Alan Touraine coined the term ‘post-industrial’ independently on either side of the Atlantic. Touraine wrote a book entitled The Post-Industrial Society(1970) to be followed by Bell’s more evangelical title The Coming of Post-industrial Society (1973). According to Prof. Gibson Burrell of the Warwick Business School, Bell talks about an expert class and Touraine about highly-skilled technicians. (Burrell, Gibson. (1996). ‘Hard times for the salariat’. In (ed.) Harry Scarbrough; pp52.)

21. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS The post-industrial society has emerged in a climate where multi-nationals move design and manufacture of goods around the globe with the deftness of ballet artists. The conventional wisdom of the post-modern age, that of mass production and well-stocked warehouses, has made way for technologies with idiosyncratic names: just-in-time or kan-ban, lean manufacturing, business process re-engineering, and the curious neologism knowledge management in the mid-1990s.

22. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS Management involves: Planning –Feasibility; Specification & Design; Producing – Implementation & Testing; Delivering; Repairing; Obsolescence

23. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS Ecological Systems? Planted->Born Nurtured Mature Die (Nourishment) New Ideas  Scrutinise Ideas  Surviving Ideas  Artefacts (concepts/devices based on the ideas)  Sell artefacts  Replace Artefacts Innovation Best Practice

24. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS

25. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS • The term knowledge management is used to articulate the concept that knowledge is an asset on a par with the tangible assets of any organisation - land, capital, plant and machinery. • Management involves the control of assets, ergo knowledge should be managed from its inception through its nurturing to maturity to exploitation and to ultimate obsolescence. • Knowledge may be considered intangible and yet it has a lifecycle: conception-birth-maturity-death.

26. INTRODUCTION & ORIGINS

27. CHANGE & MANAGEMENT • There are two major factors that have precipitated change during the second half of the 20th century: • Competition: International & Domestic • Information & Communication Technologies (ICT)

28. CASE STUDIES Xerox – knowledge within a corporation; News Corporation & STAR TV ASIA CELL TECH HOLDERBANK ARTHUR ANDERSEN Telecorp PriceWaterhouse Cooper Yellow Pages & NOVARTIS Integral Consulting

29. CASE STUDIES • The strategy paper(50% mark) –Presentation (50%) • Brief description of the organisation; • Rationale for managing knowledge; • Manual & computer based systems used for KM • Reported successes or failures • YOUR EVALUATION OF THE KM PROJECT • Will you do KM the way you found it in the case study? Is KM a good thing for facilitating knowledge exchange? If so, why? If not, why not? • BIBLIOGRAPHY

30. CHANGE & MANAGEMENT International Competition

31. CHANGE & MANAGEMENT Domestic Competition Old Players & New Players: IBM, DEC (†) Siemens, Philips  Microsoft, SUN, Dell, SAP Small-to-Medium sized Enterprises (SME): SME’s contribute extensively to economic and technological innovation

32. CHANGE & MANAGEMENT Information & Comms. Technologies (ICT) • Moore’s Law: The number of transistors packed on a chip doubles every 18 months; • Computer and communications technologies are symbiotic: one facilitates the provision of another; • ICT is about data (1950s), information (1960s) and knowledge processing (1980s).

33. CHANGE & MANAGEMENT Information & Comms. Technologies (ICT)

34. CHANGE & MANAGEMENT Information & Comms. Technologies (ICT)

35. CHANGE & MANAGEMENT Key changes in which we transact:

36. CHANGE & MANAGEMENT Terminology and symbols of change: • Realignment: Mergers and acquisitions • Restructuring: Reporting structures; organisational ethos • Downsizing: Reducing work-force, investment, production capacity •  • Material gain, sometimes short-term, at the expense of the loss of the intellectual capital

37. CORPORATE LEARNING Academia Pursuit of knowledge; Transmission of culture; Instilling values. Professional Institutions Validation of experience; Code of Conduct; Representation of Interest. State/Federal Institutions Protection of individuals; Promulgation of order; Regulation of organisations. ‘The’ Market Promotion of competition; Facilitates investment; Champions individual.

38. CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn? Organisational type

39. CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn to learn? • Can organisations learn in an on-going way? • What are the main barriers to learning? • Are these barriers intrinsic to the nature of human organisation? • Can these barriers be overcome? • Does learning requires the ability to detect and correct errors: • in relation to set operating norms? • not only in relation to set operating norms but by questioning the operating norms?

40. CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn to learn? • Learning by instruction; • Learning by experimentation; • Learning by rote; • Learning by observation; • Learning from examples; • Learning by doing; • Learning by analogy; • Learning from mistakes and errors;

41. CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn? Feedback and Control Cybernetics is a subject that deals with the self-maintenance and self-control of systems, both mechanical and organic, through a feed-back process. Cyberneticians also study the communication of information in such systems. Donald Schon (MIT) & Chris Argyris (Harvard) used the principles of cybernetics to provide a framework for thinking about learning organisations.

42. CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn? Feedback and Control Control: In engineering it means to allow a machine to run within safe parameters and for the machine to operate efficiently. Feedback: An important component of any dynamic system. The ability to take into account both the inputs and outputs of a system.

43. Step 1 Sense, scan, monitor environment Initiate appropriate action Compare info. against operating norms Step 2 Step 3 CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn? Feedback and Control Single loop learning:

44. Step 1 Sense, scan, monitor environment Initiate appropriate action Compare info. against operating norms Step 2 Step 3 CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn? Feedback and Control Single loop learning: The operation of a thermostat: The thermostat is constantly sensing, scanning and monitoring its environment (Step1); checking whether to (a) do nothing; (b) increase the heat; (c ) decrease the heat (Step 2); the send an appropriate control signal to the energy source (Step 3). There are preset operating norms that can only be adjusted through an external agency. For instance: <=5 Centigrade turn heating on; >=10 C turn cooler on. Independent of changes in the environment.

45. Sense, scan, monitor environment Initiate appropriate action Compare info. against operating norms CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn? Feedback and Control Double loop learning: Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Question whether the operating norms are appropriate Step 2a

46. Sell or lease faster & bigger computers Initiate appropriate R& D and marketing strategy Institutional ownership & operation CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn? Feedback and Control Single loop learning: In computing industry Step 1 Step 2 Step 3

47. Sell or lease faster & bigger computers Initiate appropriate R& D and marketing strategy Institutional ownership & operation CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn? Feedback and Control Double loop learning: In computing industry Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Why institutional ownership & control? Step 2a

48. Sell or lease faster & bigger computers Initiate appropriate R& D and marketing strategy Institutional ownership & operation CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn? Feedback and Control Double loop learning: In computing industry Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 We should allow individual ownership & control. Step 2a

49. Sell cheaper &faster computers Initiate appropriate R& D and marketing strategy Exclusive in-house Software development CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn? Feedback and Control Single loop learning: Apple’s contribution Step 1 Step 2 Step 3

50. Sell cheaper &faster computers Initiate appropriate R& D and marketing strategy Exclusive in-house Software development CORPORATE LEARNING Can organisations learn? Feedback and Control Double loop learning: IBM contribution Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 We should allow others to develop Software for the PC Step 2a